Big data plans also need big focus on data quality

Big data is characterized by the three Vs - volume, velocity and variety. This means that analytics strategies are harvesting larger amounts of data from diverse sources and processing them faster for better business intelligence results. Analysts from Gartner recently predicted that excitement about big data will drive growth in the intelligence software market.

By the end of 2013, Gartner predicts spending on big data software and tools will increase 7 percent year-over-year, hitting $13.8 billion.

It seems like all companies are moving forward with analytics-heavy strategies to avoid being left in the dust by their forward-thinking competitors. These firms must take other aspects into consideration, however. Rich Murnane recently wrote a blog for the Data Roundtable blog, explaining that the savviest investors will also prioritize data quality.

Upholding data quality means purging records that have outlived their expiration dates, Murnane writes in the post. While storage space might be ample and there is a resounding belief that bigger is better, Murnane explains that it's crucial to manage data, differentiating the content that's still viable from information that is out-of-date or no longer useful to achieving specific goals. The data in the latter category should be purged, he reports.